Bunk Bar

These days—more precisely, the past five years—it’s taken rock music of a certain disposition to give me that little tickle in my belly. I’m more interested in what music can do for my body than what it can do for my brain … OK, I’ve reverted back to my 23-year-old self. But until I get the urge to trade in my wife for a Sk8ter Grrrl and nix the idea of kids for having an entire room dedicated to KISS and ’80s horror flicks, I refuse to believe this is a midlife crisis.

Parquet Courts play rock music that’ll make you feel young. If you’re young, they’ll make you feel smart. The Brooklyn four-piece brings together the high-voltage rawk of jeans-clad punkers with the high times of couch-ridden slackers. Needless to say it’s goddamn fantastic. The band released their first proper LP Light Up Gold last summer, a record that was largely slept on, but caught enough ears to get a re-release this month on What’s Your Rupture? (the vinyl is still available on the band’s own Dull Tools label). It’s jangly, fast and smart rock music, filled with lyrics that are unwieldy, poetic and poker-faced … even when they’re singing about being stoned and starving. And there’s not a single dud.

Parquet Courts’ recent performance here in Portland was just as good. The band—guitarists-co-barkers Austin Brown and Andrew Savage (who also did time in Texas band Teenage Cool Kids and Fergus & Geronimo), bassist Sean Yeaton and drummer Max Savage—plowed through a fast and furious set like they’d been doing it for a decade. It can be inexplicably non-descript when a band does everything right. There’s nothing easy to latch on to. Parquet Courts are simply doing. There’s no schtick, no acting; and it shows in the band’s music and in their performance.

I ran into Austin Brown and Sean Yeaton outside of Bunk Bar after their packed show on Friday—nice gents who were cool without trying to be. Not surprisingly it sounds like 2013 is going to be a big year for Parquet Courts, which includes heaps of touring, including SXSW and Musicfest NW (sssshhhhh) in September. If in the off-chance you haven’t heard this band, you will. The night of their Portland show they sold out of the vinyl copies of Light Up Gold. I’ve been playing mine nonstop all weekend, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. And why should it? Here’s to feeling good all the time.